Known both as the Kimball-Fee House and “The Oaks,” this stately home at 411 South Main Street in Adrian stands at the intersection of architecture, family history, and civic memory.
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Built in 1845 as a double house for William E. Kimball and his father-in-law, Charles Redfield, Sr., The Oaks has survived as one of the city’s most impressive domestic landmarks—not because it remained unchanged, but because each generation left a legible mark upon it.
The home’s value does not rest solely in age, pedigree, or association with prominent residents. It lies in the way the building embodies successive ideas about domestic life: the cooperative duplex of the pioneer period, the consolidated family residence of the late nineteenth century, the Classical Revival mansion of the early twentieth century, and now a highly visible preservation project of the twenty-first. The house has also witnessed an uncommon continuity of ownership. From its construction until the mid-twentieth century, it remained with descendants of the Redfield, Kimball, and Fee families. It then passed to the Hood family, whose own Adrian story was rooted in professional service and local institutions. Starting in December 2024, when Dr. Thomas D. Hood bequeathed the house to the City of Adrian, the house entered a new chapter. Recently, the City sold it to Kevon and Karrie Martis with deed restrictions requiring complete, authentic preservation and historic restoration. |
Note the roof balustrade and double entrances in this illustration from the "Aerial View Map of Adrian, Michigan," drawn and published by Albert Ruger, Battle Creek, Michigan, 1866.
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"The Kimball Home" by Howell Taylor, undated news clipping c. 1930, courtesy of the archives of the Lenawee County Historical Museum.
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 Evidence of the Greek Revival style is still evident today in the home's entablature—just below the roof—with its projecting cornice, broad frieze board, and narrow tenia.
The Architecture of Change
The Oaks began as a substantial but restrained mid-nineteenth-century dwelling with two separate entrances on a large, nearly two-acre lot that once bordered both Main and Winter streets. An 1866 illustration as well as a c. 1930 photograph suggest that its original form was a plain and boxy Greek Revival composition rather than to the columned mansion that we see today. Its architectural strength lay in its handsome massing, thoughtful proportion, balanced symmetry, and elegant roof balustrade that ran across the entire façade rather than an elaborate portico—qualities that made it suitable for two closely connected households sharing one large structure. The home's original double-house arrangement is central to understanding its significance for preservation. Double houses were uncommon during Adrian’s pioneer period, and those that were built often represented more than a practical choice. Here, the connected residences reflected the kinship, business partnership, and mutual trust between the Kimball and Redfield families, who had established ties through marriage and commercial interests in New England and New York before moving west to Adrian. |
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The first major architectural transformation occurred in 1899, when Charles W. Kimball converted the former two-family house into a single residence. Prominent Adrian contractor and architect Christian Frederick Matthes—who had designed and built the 1895 Presbyterian Parsonage (Samuel Hart Memorial) at 435 Dennis Street—removed the internal division and created a spacious home with a single entrance, central heating, electricity, and plumbing. The most visible exterior change came in 1932, when Harry A. Fee obtained a city building permit for a new porch. The resulting neoclassical portico, with colossal Doric columns, dramatically transformed the earlier house into a Classical Revival mansion. Two years later, another major remodeling project updated the interior. The single-story, south-facing Colonial Revival sunroom was probably added at the same time. These Fee-era alterations were more than decorative additions; they became part of the building’s historic fabric. They document a twentieth-century moment when Adrian’s established families used classical and Colonial Revival architecture to convey permanence and civic dignity.
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“The Oaks” was featured in the Lenawee County Historical Society's 1993 calendar.
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The Redfield-Kimball-Fee Family
The first owners of The Oaks belonged to a network of New England families whose business and household ties shaped early Adrian. William E. Kimball, born in Derry, New Hampshire, gained mercantile experience in Derry, Haverhill, Massachusetts, and New York City before moving west. His marriages strengthened his ties to the Redfield family: first to Mary Ann Redfield, and, after her death, to her sister Sarah Elizabeth Redfield, who helped raise his son, Charles W. Kimball.
William Kimball arrived in Adrian by 1843 and entered business with his father-in-law, Charles Redfield, Sr. Two years later, they purchased a two-acre lot on South Main Street and built their double house. Charles Redfield, Sr. died just three years later, but the house remained a family landmark. Kimball’s brother-in-law and former business partner in Nashua, New Hampshire, Charles “Uncle Charlie” Redfield, Jr., lived until 1900 and long regarded the old double house as his family home.
William Kimball became one of Adrian’s most dynamic nineteenth-century businessmen. He worked in general merchandising, entered the furniture and crockery trade, opened a furniture factory on South Main Street, and later formed W. E. Kimball & Son with his son, Charles W. Kimball. The firm purchased large quantities of wool for manufacturers and operated from a substantial stone-front store on West Maumee Street, reflecting Adrian’s expanding commercial reach after the pioneer era.
The next two generations of Kimballs carried the house forward, placing increasing emphasis on the beauty of its natural setting. William’s son Charles W. Kimball and his wife, Leora Wood Kimball, made The Oaks their home, and their daughter Harriet was born there in 1867. On January 22, 1902, Harriet married Harry Anson Fee in an elaborate winter wedding at The Oaks. Live greenbrier vines and bright pink carnations purchased from Elmer Smith adorned the walls. By then, Smith’s greenhouses at 957 West Maumee Street were producing some of the world’s most innovative chrysanthemums—a distinction well known to the plant-loving Kimball family.
After the wedding, Harry joined the household on South Main Street, linking the Kimballs to another family of civic prominence. The son of Civil War veteran and newspaper publisher Capt. Jerome H. Fee, Harry later led Citizens Light & Power Company and founded Hidden Lake Gardens. That landscape legacy extended the family’s interest in cultivated beauty far beyond the grounds of The Oaks.
By the early 1930s, Adrian-born architect and historic preservation writer Howell Taylor praised the home’s beautiful trees, gardens, and carefully designed landscape. The great oaks gave the property its name while the Fees’ devotion to gardening helped make it one of Adrian’s showplaces. Harriet Kimball Fee later continued this civic legacy by endowing the beautification and maintenance of Adrian’s parks and public properties. The family’s story, therefore, is not merely genealogical; it is also architectural, commercial, horticultural, and civic.
The first owners of The Oaks belonged to a network of New England families whose business and household ties shaped early Adrian. William E. Kimball, born in Derry, New Hampshire, gained mercantile experience in Derry, Haverhill, Massachusetts, and New York City before moving west. His marriages strengthened his ties to the Redfield family: first to Mary Ann Redfield, and, after her death, to her sister Sarah Elizabeth Redfield, who helped raise his son, Charles W. Kimball.
William Kimball arrived in Adrian by 1843 and entered business with his father-in-law, Charles Redfield, Sr. Two years later, they purchased a two-acre lot on South Main Street and built their double house. Charles Redfield, Sr. died just three years later, but the house remained a family landmark. Kimball’s brother-in-law and former business partner in Nashua, New Hampshire, Charles “Uncle Charlie” Redfield, Jr., lived until 1900 and long regarded the old double house as his family home.
William Kimball became one of Adrian’s most dynamic nineteenth-century businessmen. He worked in general merchandising, entered the furniture and crockery trade, opened a furniture factory on South Main Street, and later formed W. E. Kimball & Son with his son, Charles W. Kimball. The firm purchased large quantities of wool for manufacturers and operated from a substantial stone-front store on West Maumee Street, reflecting Adrian’s expanding commercial reach after the pioneer era.
The next two generations of Kimballs carried the house forward, placing increasing emphasis on the beauty of its natural setting. William’s son Charles W. Kimball and his wife, Leora Wood Kimball, made The Oaks their home, and their daughter Harriet was born there in 1867. On January 22, 1902, Harriet married Harry Anson Fee in an elaborate winter wedding at The Oaks. Live greenbrier vines and bright pink carnations purchased from Elmer Smith adorned the walls. By then, Smith’s greenhouses at 957 West Maumee Street were producing some of the world’s most innovative chrysanthemums—a distinction well known to the plant-loving Kimball family.
After the wedding, Harry joined the household on South Main Street, linking the Kimballs to another family of civic prominence. The son of Civil War veteran and newspaper publisher Capt. Jerome H. Fee, Harry later led Citizens Light & Power Company and founded Hidden Lake Gardens. That landscape legacy extended the family’s interest in cultivated beauty far beyond the grounds of The Oaks.
By the early 1930s, Adrian-born architect and historic preservation writer Howell Taylor praised the home’s beautiful trees, gardens, and carefully designed landscape. The great oaks gave the property its name while the Fees’ devotion to gardening helped make it one of Adrian’s showplaces. Harriet Kimball Fee later continued this civic legacy by endowing the beautification and maintenance of Adrian’s parks and public properties. The family’s story, therefore, is not merely genealogical; it is also architectural, commercial, horticultural, and civic.
Photograph of Harriet Kimball Fee, courtesy the Lenawee County Historical Museum
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Photograph of Harry Anson Fee from his 1955 obituary in the Adrian Daily Telegram, courtesy the Lenawee County Historical Museum.
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The Hood Family
When Harry A. Fee died in 1955, he left The Oaks to Bixby Hospital, which later sold the property at public auction. In August 1958, Dr. Clifford James Hood and his wife, Clara Mitchell Hood, won the auction, placing the house in the care of a family known in Adrian for professional longevity and public service.
Dr. Clifford J. Hood was born in Adrian Township in 1902 and graduated from Adrian College in 1925 and the University of Michigan Dental School in 1928. He began his career in C. L. Martin’s established dental practice on East Maumee Street. By 1933, he had opened his own office above the Hart-Shaw drugstore at the corner of Main and Maumee Streets. His career spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar era. During the Depression, he accepted chickens and potatoes as payment and, during the war, he worked long hours to serve factory workers.
The Hood family’s connection to the house also reflects continuity within Adrian’s mid-twentieth-century professional class. Clifford Hood practiced dentistry for 63 years before retiring in 1991. His three sons also entered professional fields. Herbert N. Hood became a dental surgeon and orthodontist in Adrian and an instructor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. John Hood became a physician in California. Thomas Hood worked in Florida as a physical therapist specializing in the care of Olympic athletes before returning to his childhood home.
Under the Hoods, The Oaks remained a private residence. That fact matters. Historic houses survive not only through formal preservation campaigns, but also through decades of ordinary occupation: families heating rooms, repairing roofs, maintaining grounds, and adapting inherited spaces to daily life. By the time Thomas D. Hood bequeathed the property to the City of Adrian in December 2024, the house had remained in continuous domestic use for nearly 180 years.
A Preservation Turning Point
When the City of Adrian received the property, The Oaks was historically significant but physically vulnerable. The house had not been substantially updated since the Fee era and was in poor condition, with a leaking roof and interior water damage. City Commissioner Gordon Gauss described the city’s preservation interest in civic terms. Although the house stood outside the Historic District, he considered it historic because of the Fee family’s contributions to the City and believed it should be saved and transformed into “something really special.”
That commitment to stewardship shaped the city’s recent sale of the property to Kevon and Karrie Martis. Deed restrictions require the Martises to undertake a complete, authentic preservation and restoration of the house. These restrictions are significant because they turn preservation from an aspiration into an enforceable obligation. They recognize that a house such as The Oaks is not merely real estate, but a public cultural asset in private hands.
Martis’s restoration effort therefore represents more than the rehabilitation of a deteriorated property. It seeks to recover the architectural coherence of a house whose significance has developed over time. An authentic restoration must respect the 1845 structure, the 1899 conversion, the 1932 portico, and the 1934 interior remodeling as parts of an evolving historic whole. The goal is not to force The Oaks back to a single date, but to preserve the accumulated evidence of how Adrian families lived, prospered, displayed taste, and invested in their community.
In this respect, The Oaks is especially instructive for Adrian. Many communities have old houses, but fewer can point to a residence that so clearly connects pioneer settlement, nineteenth-century commerce, early twentieth-century civic grandeur, mid-century professional life, and contemporary preservation ethics. Its survival depends not only on skilled craftsmanship and financial investment, but also on a willingness to recognize historical complexity as valuable.
The Oaks began as a shared household and became a civic landmark. Its majestic trees, showcase gardens, colossal portico, stately rooms, and succession of owners tell a story larger than a single address. Together, they trace Adrian’s transformation from a frontier town into a commercial center, from family enterprise to public-minded philanthropy, and from private inheritance to preservation responsibility. Now in the Martises’s care, the house has entered the next phase of that story—one in which the past is not merely remembered but repaired.
©2026, essay by Peter Barr with research assistance from Paul Plassman.
When Harry A. Fee died in 1955, he left The Oaks to Bixby Hospital, which later sold the property at public auction. In August 1958, Dr. Clifford James Hood and his wife, Clara Mitchell Hood, won the auction, placing the house in the care of a family known in Adrian for professional longevity and public service.
Dr. Clifford J. Hood was born in Adrian Township in 1902 and graduated from Adrian College in 1925 and the University of Michigan Dental School in 1928. He began his career in C. L. Martin’s established dental practice on East Maumee Street. By 1933, he had opened his own office above the Hart-Shaw drugstore at the corner of Main and Maumee Streets. His career spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar era. During the Depression, he accepted chickens and potatoes as payment and, during the war, he worked long hours to serve factory workers.
The Hood family’s connection to the house also reflects continuity within Adrian’s mid-twentieth-century professional class. Clifford Hood practiced dentistry for 63 years before retiring in 1991. His three sons also entered professional fields. Herbert N. Hood became a dental surgeon and orthodontist in Adrian and an instructor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. John Hood became a physician in California. Thomas Hood worked in Florida as a physical therapist specializing in the care of Olympic athletes before returning to his childhood home.
Under the Hoods, The Oaks remained a private residence. That fact matters. Historic houses survive not only through formal preservation campaigns, but also through decades of ordinary occupation: families heating rooms, repairing roofs, maintaining grounds, and adapting inherited spaces to daily life. By the time Thomas D. Hood bequeathed the property to the City of Adrian in December 2024, the house had remained in continuous domestic use for nearly 180 years.
A Preservation Turning Point
When the City of Adrian received the property, The Oaks was historically significant but physically vulnerable. The house had not been substantially updated since the Fee era and was in poor condition, with a leaking roof and interior water damage. City Commissioner Gordon Gauss described the city’s preservation interest in civic terms. Although the house stood outside the Historic District, he considered it historic because of the Fee family’s contributions to the City and believed it should be saved and transformed into “something really special.”
That commitment to stewardship shaped the city’s recent sale of the property to Kevon and Karrie Martis. Deed restrictions require the Martises to undertake a complete, authentic preservation and restoration of the house. These restrictions are significant because they turn preservation from an aspiration into an enforceable obligation. They recognize that a house such as The Oaks is not merely real estate, but a public cultural asset in private hands.
Martis’s restoration effort therefore represents more than the rehabilitation of a deteriorated property. It seeks to recover the architectural coherence of a house whose significance has developed over time. An authentic restoration must respect the 1845 structure, the 1899 conversion, the 1932 portico, and the 1934 interior remodeling as parts of an evolving historic whole. The goal is not to force The Oaks back to a single date, but to preserve the accumulated evidence of how Adrian families lived, prospered, displayed taste, and invested in their community.
In this respect, The Oaks is especially instructive for Adrian. Many communities have old houses, but fewer can point to a residence that so clearly connects pioneer settlement, nineteenth-century commerce, early twentieth-century civic grandeur, mid-century professional life, and contemporary preservation ethics. Its survival depends not only on skilled craftsmanship and financial investment, but also on a willingness to recognize historical complexity as valuable.
The Oaks began as a shared household and became a civic landmark. Its majestic trees, showcase gardens, colossal portico, stately rooms, and succession of owners tell a story larger than a single address. Together, they trace Adrian’s transformation from a frontier town into a commercial center, from family enterprise to public-minded philanthropy, and from private inheritance to preservation responsibility. Now in the Martises’s care, the house has entered the next phase of that story—one in which the past is not merely remembered but repaired.
©2026, essay by Peter Barr with research assistance from Paul Plassman.
Below are three photographs taken inside the Kimball-Fee house in 2025. Between each is AI generated image showing Kevon and Karrie Martis' plans for restoring the home.
2025 photograph by Kevon Martis of the Kimball-Fee house living room.
AI image generated by Kevon Martis showing his plans for restoring the living room in the Kimball-Fee house.
2025 photograph by Kevon Martis of the Kimball-Fee house dining room.
AI image generated by Kevon Martis showing his plans for restoring the dining room in the Kimball-Fee house.
2025 photograph by Kevon Martis of the Kimball-Fee house kitchen.
AI image generated by Kevon Martis showing his plans for restoring the kitchen in the Kimball-Fee house.
Citations
- “Address of F. R. Stebbins, delivered in April 1879,” in W. A. Whitney and R. I. Bonner, History and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, Michigan, Volume 2, 1880, p66.
- “William E. Kimball” in W. A. Whitney and R. I. Bonner, History and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, Michigan, Volume 2, 1880, p348.
- Untitled News Articles, Adrian Daily Telegram, February 10, 1897, p3; January 23, 1899, p3; June 20, 1928, p6; July 11, 1928, p6; June 4, 1932, p5; December 31, 1932, p5; August 17, 1933, p6; May 5, 1934, p6; December 31, 1934, p8.
- “Uncle Chas. Redfield, Death of the Veteran Politician of Lenawee County, Passed Away Quietly at His Room at the Lawrence Hotel,” Adrian Daily Telegram, April 4, 1900, p3.
- “Death’s Angel Visited Adrian With Telling Effect over Sunday, Charles W. Kimball Died on Saturday Night,” Adrian Daily Telegram, November 23, 1903, p1.
- “Capt. Jerome H. Fee Died Last Evening,” Adrian Daily Telegram, December 13, 1913, p1.
- “Mrs. Chas. Kimball Died This Morning,” Adrian Daily Telegram, June 14, 1930, p1.
- Howell Taylor, "The Kimball House," undated news article clipping, published sometime before 1932 from a booklet titled "Federal Houses of Michigan--Howell Taylor" in the archives of the Lenawee County Historical Museum, County Architecture Holiger Box.
- “Mrs. Harry Fee Dies After Year’s Illness,” Adrian Daily Telegram, January 15, 1945, p1.
- “Harry A. Fee, 87, Business and Civic Leader, is Dead,” Adrian Daily Telegram, May 3, 1955, pp1, 7.
- “Hoods Purchase Harry Fee Home,” Adrian Daily Telegram, August 8, 1958, p8.
- “Dr. Herbert Hood Opens Dental Office,” Adrian Daily Telegram, June 23, 1960, p14.
- Charles Lindquist, “Adrian’s Beautification Due to One Family,” Adrian Daily Telegram, July 8, 1989, p5.
- Michael Storm, “Adrian Dentist Hangs Up Drills after 63 Years,” Adrian Daily Telegram, December 20, 1991, p8.
- “Dr. Clifford James Hood,” obituary, Adrian Daily Telegram, September 14, 1999, p2.
- Brad Heineman, “City Commission Weighs What to Do with Fee House Now That It’s Been Deeded to the City,” Adrian Daily Telegram, February 2, 2025, p1.
- Find A Grave memorials for Dr. Clifford James Hood, Herbert Newton Hood, Harriett Kimball Fee, Leora Kimball, William E. Kimball, and Charles Redfield, Sr.